Fitzgerald: The learned analysts

Robert Spencer recently remarked here that a certain fact was “contrary to the bland assumptions of the learned analysts.”

But which “learned analysts” are those? What is happening today is not that a new doctrine has arisen, but that the old, and permanent doctrine of Jihad has been given new life by the new strength of Islam that is the result of three things:

1) The money that comes from oil and gas, and that since 1973 alone has amounted to ten trillion dollars.2) The nearly-simultaneous admission, into many of the countries that make up the Bilad al-Kufr, or Lands of the Infidels, of millions of Muslim migrants. The ruling elites who so carelessly let them in did not know, and simply made bland assumptions about, the texts and tenets and attitudes naturally arising from Islam. They never wondered about what was contained, undeclared, in the mental baggage of those Muslim migrants. They were seen, quite incorrectly, only as “economic migrants” — just like other, non-Muslim immigrants — who would come, work hard, and then somehow fit in. The doctrine of Islam makes a central division of the universe between Believer and Infidel, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. That doctrine mandates a state of permanent war (though not always of open warfare) between Believer and Infidel, and requires of Muslims that they participate, sometimes as a collective but in certain circumstances individually, in a “struggle” or Jihad to push back the boundaries of Dar al-Islam at the expense of Dar al-Harb, so that eventually the whole world, which of course belongs to Allah, comes under Islam’s dominance, and Muslims rule, everywhere.

This is the doctrine. That some Muslims may, for various reasons, do not participate wholeheartedly in that Jihad, or may choose to engage in non-violent Jihad — through deployment of the Money Weapon, or non-stop well-financed carefully-targeted campaigns of Da’wa, or simply through constant overbreeding relative to the indigenous Infidels so that they are engaged, without more, in demographic conquest — should be no relief at all for wary Infidels. The Netherlands had 15,000 Muslims in 1970; now it has one million. Similar terrifying rises can be charted for other countries in Europe. What is to be done? Nothing? Something? If something, what? At the very least, all Muslim migration to the West must be halted, as well as all support from abroad from the Saudis who pay for the building and upkeep for those ever-expanding mosques and madrasas. Then authorities should carefully examine how Muslims exploit the benefits offered — free education, health care, subsidized or free housing — in ways that involve the definition of the family, and outright fraud. They should apply all the resources of the state to investigating and denying claims, and prosecuting those Muslims (in other words, a selective use of investigative and prosecutorial resources) who are found to be fiddlers of the system. Finally, there are other ways to make a country less gushingly welcoming (see Karen Hughes) to those whose ideology makes them permanent enemies of that country’s political and legal institutions — institutions that they would change, in a minute, if only they could.

Those who believe in the Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira cannot conceivably offer their allegiance to the American Constitution; the texts and tenets of Islam flatly contradict the Constitution. If anyone denies this, let him start by explaining how Islam views three clauses — Freedom of Speech, Free Exercise, and the Establishment Clauses, of the First Amendment. And from that, go to the Fourteenth Amendment, and ask about how in Muslim societies, what equivalent now exists to ensure equal treatment for non-Muslims under the law — or what equivalent ever could be found.

3) The appropriation by Muslim propagandists, for their own malevolent uses, of the technological advances made in the Western world — audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite television, the Internet — that make the dissemination of Islam’s full message, and of its propaganda, much easier.

Now if by “learned analysts” one means the various apologists — google “MESA Nostra” for more — who include both Muslims (Omid Safi, Rashid Khalidi, the inimitable Ode-to-Edward-Said composer Hamid Dabashi) and non-Muslims (Michael Sells, Carl Ernst, Richard Bulliet et al.), including the occasional successful Sammy Glick of Academe (google “Academic War Profiteers”), then perhaps the epithet ought to be dropped.

The true “learned analysts” of Islam are Snouck Hurgronje, Arthur Jeffrey, Henri Lammens, Joseph Schacht, Georges Vajda, and several hundred others, those once called “Orientalists.” They were the scholars whose training, whose mental preparation, was incomparably more complete than that of so many of those now parading about on campuses today. They studied and wrote about Islam when one could be truthful, and did not care about offending Muslim colleagues, the century (from roughly 1865 to 1965) before the Great Inhibition descended. After that, only a handful dared to continue to write the truth, while those who might have done so were driven out of the field, not hired or not promoted, so that it could be left almost entirely in the hands of the Army of Apologists.

And only recently have, here and there, a few managed to slip by. But the breach has been made, and MESA Nostrans have now been held up to inspection and well-deserved criticism and ridicule — despite their numbers, and despite so many of them sitting in well-upholstered and well-endowed chairs (filled, in many cases, in the careful way that Omid Safi was hired at Chapel Hill through the machinations of Carl Ernst, for the apologists will always be careful to hire others just like themselves, lest the Party Line for the students be discordantly interrupted by a dissident voice).

“Learned” analysts can be found. Just go to the library. Start with Schacht, Snouck Hurgronje, Arthur Jeffrey, Lammens, St. Clair Tisdall, even Lewis at his best not his worst (“The Political Language of Islam” and “The Multiple Identities of the Middle East”). Don’t forget Bat Ye’or and her pioneering works on the dhimmi and what she (not Bashir Gemayel) first called, usefully — despite the disgraceful attempt by Bernard Lewis to prevent that word gaining currency — “dhimmitude.”

They are all sitting on the library shelves, waiting for you: the true Learned Analysts. Go to them.

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